Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評), the local arm of Standard & Poor’s, yesterday said its ratings on Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) would not be affected by the financial service provider’s plans to acquire Tong Shing Securities Co (東興證券) for NT$1.15 billion (US$31 million).
“We do not expect the acquisition plan to significantly affect Taishin Financial’s financial profile, given the small scale of the securities firm, which accounts for about 1.3 percent of the group’s net worth,” the agency said in a press statement.
On a stand-alone basis, this acquisition will slightly increase Taishin Financial’s double leverage ratio by about 1 percent, it said. The board of Taishin Financial agreed on Thursday to buy Kaohsiung-based Tong Shing’s 130 million shares at NT$11.13 apiece, or a 10.3 percent premium, Taishin said in an exchange filing.
The move will help the company retain its securities business, although it had promised not to compete for clients with KGI Securities Co (凱基證券), which acquired the company’s securities arm Taishin Securities Co (台証證券) for NT$29 billion in May, company president Lin Keh-hsiao (林克孝) told local media yesterday.
On Thursday, Taishin Financial said it planned to buy back Taishin Investment Trust Co (台新投資信託), wholly owned by Taishin Securities, for NT$307 million, or NT$10.24 per share.
The company said it would also buy back a 92 percent stake in Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧), owned by Taishin Securites, for NT$323.6 million, or NT$11.72 per share, the exchange filing showed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day